Retirement on SCOTUS

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Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's oldest member and leader of its ...

Retirement on SCOTUS

Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, said Friday he is retiring, Fox News has confirmed, giving President Obama his second high court opening to fill.

In a letter to the president, Stevens, the longest active serving member, said he has "concluded that it would be in the best interests of the court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the court's next term" in October.

Stevens said he will step down when the court finishes its work for the summer in late June or early July.

In a written statement, Chief Justice John Roberts said Stevens "has earned the gratitude and admiration of the American people for his nearly 40 years of distinguished service to the Judiciary, including more than 34 years on the Supreme Court."

"He has enriched the lives of everyone at the Court through his intellect, independence, and warm grace. We will miss John's presence in our daily work, but will take joy in his and Maryan's continued friendship in the years ahead," Roberts said, referring to Stevens' wife.

Stevens' announcement Friday in Washington had been hinted at for months. It comes 11 days before his 90th birthday.

Stevens began signaling a possible retirement last summer when he hired just one of his usual complement of four law clerks for the next court term. He acknowledged in several interviews that he was contemplating stepping down and would certainly do so during Obama's presidency.

The timing of his announcement leaves ample time for the White House to settle on a successor and Senate Democrats, who control 59 votes, to conduct confirmation hearings and a vote. Republicans have not ruled out an attempt to delay confirmation.

The leading candidates to replace Stevens are Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 49, and federal appellate Judges Merrick Garland, 57, and Diane Wood, 59.

In a Fox News opinion poll this week, 52 percent of respondents said Obama's next Supreme Court nominee should be a conservative compared with 29 percent favoring a liberal.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he hopes the upcoming confirmation battle will produce a "thoughtful and civil discourse."

"The decisions of the Supreme Court are often made by only five individuals, but they impact the daily lives of each and every American," he said in a written statement. "All senators should strive to fulfill their constitutional duty of advise and consent, and give fair and thorough consideration to Justice Stevens' successor."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the president "has an obligation to nominate judges who understand and are committed to their proper role in our system of government."

"As I have said for many years, someone who would be an activist judge, who would substitute their own views for what the law requires, is not qualified to serve on the federal bench," he said in a written statement. "The confirmation process should be fair and thorough, and the president's nominee should be judged by this standard."

Stevens' departure will not change the court's conservative-liberal split because Obama is certain to name a liberal-leaning replacement. But the new justice is not likely to be able to match Stevens' ability to marshal narrow majorities in big cases.

Stevens was able to draw the support of the court's swing votes, now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Anthony Kennedy, to rein in or block some Bush administration policies, including the detention of suspected terrorists following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, its tilt toward protecting businesses from some lawsuits and its refusal to act against global warming.

Stevens has been on the bench longer than any other current member of the Supreme Court and was a federal appellate judge in Chicago in 1975 when President Gerald Ford picked him for the high court.

Stevens impact in the bench was immediate as his vote helped forge a narrow majority to reinstate the death penalty. But by 2008, Stevens concluded the way capital punishment was carried out by states was pointless and "patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment."

It was "a conclusion that the stable ground that he thought he found early on wasn't proving as stable as he would have liked," Stewart Baker, a former Stevens law clerk told Fox News.

Stevens took issue with being labeled a liberal justice. In recent years, Stevens maintained that his conservative principles never changed during his time on the court. Rather it was the justices around him and perhaps the country too that became more conservative than him.

Click here to read Fox News blog on the next Supreme Court nominee.

Fox News' James Rosen, Lee Ross and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

"A heavily armed citizenry is not about overthrowing the government; it is about preventing the government from overthrowing liberty. A people stripped of their right of self defense is defenseless against their own government." -source

Goodwin Liu "anti-gun" nominee that Obama wants to be a Federal Appeals Court Judge
Nominees such as this will undo the whatever protections that the recent Supreme Court decisions have acknowledged.

Imagine a judicial candidate that is so far to the left that even Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, is hesitant to push him forward.

Imagine a liberal law professor that not only fails to meet the ABA's basic requirements for a federal judge, but is so green behind the ears that it appears the only reason he is being nominated to the federal courts is because he served as part of President Obama's transition team. . . .

a law journal article of Liu's where he criticizes the Supreme Court for declaring two gun control laws as unconstitutional -- the Brady Law's unfunded mandate and the Gun-Free School Zones Act.

Liu said that Supreme Court cases like these did "damage" to civil rights and "upset settled understandings of congressional power." What?! Striking down gun control laws does damage to civil rights? Well, let's be clear: the Court did upset someone's "settled" understanding of things, but it was the LIBERAL'S misunderstanding of the Constitution.

POSTED BY JOHN LOTT AT 9:29 PM 0 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST
Goodwin Liu left out information on over 117 speeches, publications, and other materials from his judicial nomination materials
This appears to be an unprecedented attempt by a judicial nominee to hide his record.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday slammed one of the Obama administration's most controversial judicial nominees for failing to initially disclose more than 100 of his speeches, publications and other background materials -- an omission the Republicans called unprecedented and a possible attempt to "hide his most controversial work."

They said Goodwin Liu's nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is in "jeopardy" in light of the problem.

The complaint came after Liu, a Berkeley law professor, gave the Senate Judiciary Committee a bundle of supplemental material that contained 117 things he left out after his February nomination.

Among the items disclosed were several speeches on affirmative action and his participation at an event co-sponsored by the Center for Social Justice at Berkeley and the the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

In response to the new information, all seven Republicans on the Judiciary Committee fired off a letter to its chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., demanding that Liu's hearing be postponed again.

Liu's hearing already has been postponed twice, and Republicans have mounted somewhat of a campaign against him -- targeting him for his writings suggesting health care is a right and describing the Constitution as a document that should adapt to changes in the world.

The omissions didn't help his case.

"At best, this nominee's extraordinary disregard for the committee's constitutional role demonstrates incompetence; at worst, it creates the impression that he knowingly attempted to hide his most controversial work from the committee," the Republicans wrote in the letter to Leahy Tuesday. "Professor Liu's unwillingness to take seriously his obligation to complete these basic forms is potentially disqualifying and has placed his nomination in jeopardy."

The letter said Liu only provided the extra material after committee staff had found a number of omissions in the packet he gave up front.

While it may not change the make-up of the sitting judges this will be a liberal judge that will be there for another 30 or 40 years. Along with Soto-Mayer these two could possibly out live the conservatives that are there now when another Dem president will appoint more libs.